Understanding Your Character
In this guide, we'll have a look at your character's attributes, inventory, and knowledge. Your Character Your character's attributes are shown in the Character window. Access this window by pressing C, or through the EQII Menu. Notice that there are several tabs on the left side of this window. This guide will explain the basic purposes of the tabs, the information you access from them, and the purpose of other User Interface (UI) elements for the Character window. On the right side of Character window you can see your stats, such as Attributes, Resistances, and Defenses. You can open and close the information about stats by clicking a button labeled Stats. Some additional details are displayed when you click on different tabs on the left side of the character window. Let's discuss some of the information on this screen: Attributes :Main Article: Character Attributes EQ2 characters are described by five attributes. Your race dictates your starting attributes. Each time you gain a level, your most important attributes will improve slightly. All five attributes have some importance to all classes: * Strength: Affects the Power pool and damage amount for fighters. * Agility: Affects the Power pool and damage amount for Scouts. * Stamina: Affects the Health pool, mitigation and the chance to avoid attacks all together. * Intelligence: Affects the power pool and spell damage for Mages. * Wisdom: Affects the power pool and damage for Priests. Resistances :Main Article: Resistance Below the attributes, your resistances are shown. Resistances are your defense against spells. They are the magical counterpart to mitigation, as they absorb a flat percentage of incoming damage. There are 3 types of resistances, corresponding to the 3 types of spell damage mobs can use in EQ2. All nonphysical attacks in EQ2 fit into one of these 3 types. The 3 types are Arcane, Elemental, and Noxious. Although the tool-tip will display the reduced damage from an even-con enemy, it is not always accurate, as some spells are "harder to resist" and require varying levels of additional mitigation. Defenses Your defensive melee stats are shown in the lower part of the window. These are "secondary stats": they're calculated from your attributes and skills (plus your equipment and buffs). Point your mouse cursor at each of them to see a tooltip describing what they mean. The most important defense stats are: * Mitigation: reduces the severity of physical attacks that hit you. * Avoidance: your ability to avoid a physical attack, taking no damage at all. Skills :''Main Article: Skills Choose the Skills tab to see your character's skills. Skills affect how well your character will perform certain actions. Skills go up in rank automatically through general usage, and are limited by your level (the maximum rank for a skill is your level * 5). :Skills are divided into three main categories or skill sets. The detailed information for each skill set is accessed by clicking on additional tabs at the bottom of the Character window looking at your skills: '''Adventure Skills:' * Combat: these skills directly affect your ability to successfully attack, skills over the cap also marginally increase Combat Art damage. * Spellcasting: these skills directly affect the performance of your spells. * Avoidance: these skills directly affect your ability to avoid physical damage. Behind the scenes, these skills are equivalent to Resistances. Tradeskill Skills: these skills affect your ability to craft items if and when you choose to take up a tradeskill or secondary tradeskill. The list of skills listed under this additional tab is determined by the tradeskill you chooose (eg. a Tailors skills are slightly different than those of a Carpenter). General Skills: * Harvesting: these skills affect your ability to extract materials from harvesting nodes in the world. * General: these skills affect your swimming, falling, and alcohol tolerance. * Language: these all-or-nothing skills determine whether you understand each language or not. See Languages for more information. Other Character Info We're not going to discuss every page of the Character window in detail in this guide, but here's a quick overview: * Factions page: shows your current reputation with all factions that you've discovered in the world. :*To learn about how factions can effect your character see the faction page. * Options page: allows you to customize your character's appearance and voice. :*To learn more about some options you have for customizing look of your gear and mount, see the appearance page. Your Inventory In the center of the Character window, you see a "paper doll" view of your character, surrounded by his or her inventory slots. Equipment Slots If this is a new character, then you'll have starting equipment in some of the slots, but most equipment slots will be empty. * To the left is your clothing or armor, which usually provides mitigation against physical attacks. * To the right is your jewelry, which usually boost your resistances, but don't provide mitigation. * Below your paper doll is your weaponry and other held items, and food/drink. * Along the bottom are six inventory slots that can hold backpacks or other containers. Money :Main Article: Money At the very bottom of the Equipment window, your current amount of money is shown as 4 types of coins. Coin denominations progress in the following order, from smallest to largest: copper, silver, gold, and platinum. This differs from Currency which is explained in the next section below. *As you earn money from quests or selling items, it automatically converts to the best (largest) denomination. The exchange rate between coin types is 100-to-1. *To transfer money to a bank you can drag it from this area of the character window and into the portion of the bank window set aside for money. Currency As you make your way through the world, you will earn regular money (copper, gold, etc.) as described above, but you will also get special currency from completing some quests, by participating in World Events, if you attend City Festivals, and as you gain Faction in different zones or craft. In order to save space in your bags, a special tab in the Character window was added for the wide variety of currency that accumulates. You can transfer (most of) this currency between all of the characters on your account. To do so, click on the Currency tab, drag the currency to a bag slot, and then transfer it to your shared bank. From there, log on to any of your other characters to transfer it to their bags and into their currency tab. Bags and Items Along the bottom of the character sheet (press C) are six slots that can hold a variety of containers, like backpacks or strong boxes. Double-click a bag to open it. You can open and close all of your inventory bags at once by pressing B or Alt+L. As a new character, you'll start with one small bag, and five tiny ones. You'll find that these bags fill up fast as you kill creatures and harvest materials on your adventures. You can sell items to NPC merchants to free up space, but you'll want to buy bigger bags as soon as you've amassed enough cash to afford them. *Replacing a smaller bag or strong box with a new one is very easy. Simply drag the larger replacement to the bag slot that hold the old one. The items you've been carrying in the old one will automatically transfer to the new container and the old bag will shift into the first slot in your new, larger bag. As you finish quests and defeat monsters, you'll often receive items for your efforts. When you accept these items, they automatically go into your bag slots. Find the item in your bag, and right-click it to see a menu of actions: Examine, Equip (if you can wear it), Use (if it can be activated), or Destroy. If you don't want to keep an item, it's usually better to sell it than destroy it. To sell an Item for a few coins, find an NPC merchant and click on him to open the Buy/Sell window. Or, if you think the item is valuable to other players, you could find a Broker NPC in your home city and put the item up for sale. The Auto-Inventory Feature The more time you spend in Norrath, the more items you amass in your inventory. With so many bags slots, bank slots, and vault inside of houses, keeping track of everything can seem overwhelming. To make your life in Norrath easier, a special auto-sort feature was added to the Character window and bags. Let's begin with how to quickly and easily auto-sort items in your bags. :Bag Options *The Bag Options window allows you to auto-sort the items in your bags by type (armor, harvests, jewelry, and more). To do so, open a bag and click on the square button in the upper left corner. The Bag Options window will open and you can check and uncheck a list of items by type. Checked items will automatically transfer to that bag when you complete quests, loot chests, harvest, and so forth. You can do this for each bag and change you can alter the auto-sorting at any time. :Inventory Search and sorting your bags later *If your bags are already stuffed and you didn't set up to auto-sort bag yet, or if you want to re-sort items again all at once, you have another option. On the bottom of the Equipment tab of the Character window and just below the "paper doll" image of you character, is a button labeled Sort. Once you've used the Bag Options to choose which bags will sort into, click the Sort button. **''Note: you can turn off the sorting function for each bag, in case you sorted your bags by misstake a few times. That means that looted item still go into the next free splot in your bags.'' *If you're having difficulty finding an item in your inventory, you can also use the inventory search feature. It's located in the same area as the Sort button, but off to the right side. The icon is a magnifying glass. Click on it and a search window will pop up. Type the name or part of the name of what you're looking for (eg. you can just type "boots" to find anything with boots in its name) and then look in you chat window under the tab labeled Game. You will see a list of all items with the name or partial name you searched for and its location in a specific bag, bank slot, or in a house vault. Appearance Slots The Appearance tab in the Character window shows your Appearance slots. In it, you can place any armor, clothing, or weapon that can be used by your class and that is at or below your character's level. You character will not gain any stats or other benefits from items used in the appearance slots. The Appearance slots are only for vanity's sake, allowing you to customize the look of your character's gear from head to toe. When you find a piece of armor that looks good, but you can't justify using it for one reason or another, then you can put it in your Appearance slot instead. Many players like to customize their characters to have bare hands, bare feet, etc. This is done by using special appearance items that make your regular armor vanish when they are used in the appearance slots. Your Knowledge :Main Article: Abilities Bring up your Knowledge Book by pressing K. The book is divided into sections: Abilities, Spells, Combat Arts, and Tradeskills. Each section can grow to several pages. A "Sort" button lets you customize the order of the icons in each section. We'll discuss the Knowledge Book more in the guide about Spells and Combat Arts. For now, just know that all of your character's abilities and spells are automatically placed in the Knowledge Book. When you get a new ability or spell, it'll be found in the Knowledge Book. * Abilities: These are general abilities such as Sprinting, Sitting, as well as your Call of City ability (which send you back to your home city). This section also contains abilities that come from customizing your character through Alternate Advancement and Traditions. * Spells: If you're a spellcasting class, then your spells are listed in this section. Spells typically have powerful effects, and take several seconds to cast. * Combat Arts: If you're a melee class, then your combat arts are listed in this section. Combat arts typically are less powerful than spells, but cast very quickly. * Tradeskill: When you take up a tradeskill, you'll receive Crafting Skills that are appropriate to your chosen profession. These crafting skills are found in the Tradeskill section of your Knowledge Book. You'll gain more skills every so often as you gain levels in your tradeskill. When you point your mouse at an icon, you'll get a pop-up tooltip briefly explaining the ability or spell. For more detailed information, right-click the icon and choose "Examine". To use your spells and abilities, you can click on the icons within the Knowledge Book, or you can drag-and-drop icons to your hotbar and use them from there instead. EQ2 automatically adds your first few spells and abilities to your hotbar, but you should get accustomed to putting the icons on your hotbar yourself. Once you move up to a second hotbar (Add an additional hotbar by right-clicking an icon on the existing bar and choose "Open New Hotbar"), you'll have to add icons to it yourself. Your Condition Your character's condition is described by two resources: Health and Power. They are represented by the green and blue bars next to your character's name. * You lose health each time an enemy damages you. If you run out of Health, then you die. * You use Power to cast spells or perform combat arts. If you run out of Power, then you can't use any of your abilities - all you can do is auto-attack. Health and Power regenerate automatically - slowly while in combat, quickly when not in combat. It is not necessary to sit or stand still to regenerate. Food and Drink :Main Article: Food and drink Food and drink are necessary for efficient progress in Norrath. Food increases the amount of Health you regain when out of combat. Beverages increase the amount of Power you regain when out of combat. Some food and drink also provide bonuses to your attributes, such as Strength or Intelligence. Each food and drink is rated for a certain adventuring level. You must be of the appropriate adventuring level to gain the full effect provided by the food or beverage. Low-level characters will not get any extra benefit from using high-level food, and high-level characters will have increased downtime from using low-level food. Most of the food and drink items available in the game are crafted by players (the Provisioner tradeskill class). Therefore, the best way to get food and drink is to buy it from other players through the Broker, or to make it yourself. The food and drink sold by NPC merchants is of very low quality, and is not recommended. Occasionally, you'll receive decent food as a quest reward.